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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Heathen

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Heathen Visibility Project 2023 in Review

The Heathen Visibility Project was gearing back up in the early part of the year, continuing last year's trend. We were making more photos of people again, after pausing while groups and gatherings were sidelined by the pandemic lockdowns. However, a monkeywrench was thrown in the works by the sudden appearance of so-called "AI" art, and art websites' widespread embrace of it. What is being called generative AI is not true artificial intelligence, but since that's the term that's most commonly used, I'll be calling it "AI" as well (while hoping any true AI out there knows I'm not talking about it.) It's really just ML, machine learning.

Creators have to decide if it is worth continuing to create and share their work when the net is flooded with computer generated swill. The garbage churned out by "AI" / ML programs fills up searches, social media feeds, host sites, and sales sites, while human-made works become harder to find. Worse, the "AI" art and writing are based on the human-made work, mostly without the creators' consent. Some "AI" art prompts generate art with recognizable models and celebrity faces and sometimes even the watermarks of the artists whose works were stolen to train the "AI" systems. It's discouraging.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

My first article for my new Asatru Plus column appears in the latest issue of Witches & Pagans Magazine. I think readers of my blog and book will enjoy my column, and vice versa. My blog Gnosis Diary focuses on gnosis and on my personal experiences, while the column will focus on practical information for readers to use. 

My first column is about honoring the powers associated with the days of the week. After a brief introduction about my new column, I talk about the heathen gods and powers of the days of the week, and the 7 day heathen ritual cycle. The powers are Sunnna on Sunday, Mani on Monday, Tyr on Tuesday, Odin on Wednesday, Thor on Thursday, Freya on Friday, and then there is Bath Day. The old name for Saturday was Laugrdagr which means Bath Day or Wash Day. Why 6 major powers and bathing? Find out in my column! 

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Asatru and Heathen religion in the modern age was the topic of my recent appearance on The Bard's Archive. This is a video interview, and includes some cute video of my cat Happy. Viewers also get to see my main house altar. I got so wrapped up in the topic, when Garret asked at the end if I had anything to add, I forgot to say "Buy my book!" lol. The link to the video appears at the end of this post, below my other news. 

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
The Rainbow on the Book and other stories

What a magical thing a book is. Someone spends years slowly composing their thoughts, writing and rewriting every word over and over until it's their best work. Someone else polishes it, and someone else makes art to sandwich all the words together, and finally you open it and behold! There are markings, and they speak into your mind, and the words flow to you and you hear the thoughts of the author. Over time, over space, sometimes translated into new languages, or even beyond death, you hear another's thoughts and words.

To write, to read, to even just pick up a book and look at it is to honor the god of writing, Odin. Odin, who won the Runes on the Tree, in his act of shamanic self-sacrifice. Odin, who spoke his own words to human writers and poets to be written in the Havamal, the Sayings of the High One: "I know that I hung on the windy tree, nine long nights, without food or drink, I looked down, I took up the runes, screaming I took them, I fell back from there."

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

I like science metaphors when talking about heathen concepts that differ from the ideas common in our current modern American culture. In the Fireverse, my fictional universe based on heathen mythology (see previous entries on that topic), the main human character is an author stand-in who gets a guided tour to the worlds and time, like the main human character in Dante's Bible fan fiction. Like me, she likes science and especially physics as spiritual and religious metaphors, so, the Hel-Boat looks like a Viking longship but behaves like a spaceship, landing and taking off from the Nine Worlds as if they were planet type worlds rather than the dimensions the main character knows them to be. Metaphors for the multipartite soul didn't come up in Some Say Fire because the main character is already in her afterlife after the opening scene, but I'm thinking about them now.

Reading Heathen Soul Lore Foundations to review it (review coming soon), I encountered a metaphor for the various parts of the human soul based on alchemy, especially the idea of refining salts to transform substances into other things. This metaphor just doesn't work for me because I'm not into alchemy. During my daily morning coffee ritual I had a conversation in my mind with Odin about metaphors for the soul.

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USA Lawmaker Attacks Heathen Religious Symbol

In a video on MSN, an "expert" identifies the Valknut as "a symbol used by white supremacists" which AOC then repeats. The symbol is hard to see in the video but it is verbally identified as a Valknut. The video does not say anything about the man with the Valknut, it says the symbol itself is a white supremacist symbol.  

video link here: 

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

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